Constant chatter, telephone calls and the need to have an opinion have made
the modern world “exhausting”, a best-selling author has argued, as she
advocates taking refuge in total silence.

Tracy Chevalier, the novelist best known for Girl With A Pearl Earring, said she found today’s world “too noisy”, both physically and mentally.

Speaking at the Telegraph Ways With Words festival, she said the need to have a constant opinion on every matter was “exhausting”, as she disclosed she had sought solace in traditional Quaker meetings where she sat in silence for an hour.

Chevalier, whose latest book The Last Runaway features a young Quaker girl, added she now understood the value of silence.

“A few years ago I was in the street in New York trying to talk into a cell phone and I realised it was so noisy I couldn’t hear a thing,” she told the audience at Dartington Hall, Devon.

“What was particularly annoying was that everybody around me seemed to be hearing everything fine, and maybe they were just used to that volume.

“I just felt everything about it was too noisy; not just physically too noisy but mentally too noisy.

“We’re all expected to have so many opinions now, to write about it, blog about it, talk about it. It’s really exhausting. I was looking for a place where I didn’t have to do all that.”

Her latest novel tells the story of Honor Bright, a young Quaker from Bridport, Dorset, who emigrated to Ohio in the 19th century and became involved in the Underground Railroad to assist runaway slaves.

“I wanted to write a character who found the value of silence as important as I do,” Chevalier said.

“The Quakers believe that there’s something in each of us that is the same — whether you call it God or inner light or whatever — and the way to tap into that is to sit for an hour in silence.

“You sit facing inward into a circle, together, and you don’t say anything. I loved that time and I started going back to the meetings.

“I found it was a refuge from the noisiness of this life.”

Chevalier, 50, an American-born author who moved to Britain in the Eighties, has previously written about Mary Anning, the fossil hunter and William Blake, the poet, as well as Vermeer, the artist. The craft of quilting is another motif in her latest novel, a pastime that Chevalier said embraced the value of silence.

“Interestingly I think quilting and the Quaker idea of silence go together quite well,” she said.

“I find what I’m looking for in both of them, in a non-verbal place.

“Most of my life is spent talking, because I talk so much, and writing and reading. So it’s all verbal. I wanted to sit in silence and try to reach a place that’s non-verbal.

“It’s the same with quilting; it uses a completely different part of my brain from writing.